Restore the L.A. River right for all to enjoy: Editorial

When formerly unbudging government bureaucracies change their tune, it calls for a certain amount of celebration.

So raise a toast to the Army Corps of Engineers, which has made a sharp turnaround from its long recalcitrance about restoring and enhancing the L.A. River — Southern California’s great natural resource. Congratulations to the corps for getting on board with naturalists, neighborhood leaders and other river restoration advocates.

Overly channelized, the L.A. River has been a dumping place for industrial and household pollutants and an unsightly blight on the landscape stinking to high heaven for too long. But now the river is on the right course.

This week, federal officials announced their support to restore 11 miles of the river to a fairly natural state from Griffith Park to downtown Los Angeles. The corps said the $453 million option, the second-cheapest of 21 formal alternatives, was the most economically efficient of them. There is much good in the plan, especially its removal of concrete at the confluence with the Arroyo Seco, naturalizing dozens of acres of riverside land, and the creation of marshland 100 yards wide in Glassell Park.

But the plan misses an opportunity to open the river to the people. Key is removing steep concrete walls leading down to the river and the creation of landscaped terraces on its banks, points of access to what could become the region’s greatest recreation area. It might never be the Seine or the Thames or San Francisco Bay, but the waterway and the riparian habitat that surrounds it can, within our lifetimes, become a natural wonder rather than an embarrassing backwater.

For more than 80 years, the corps has been part of the river’s problem. The federal government lined it with concrete through much of its way from its headwaters above the San Fernando Valley to where it flows into the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach.

As with the Arroyo Seco, the San Gabriel River and other Southern California waterways, the flooding that came with torrential rains was indeed a problem for a rapidly developing Southern California. The Great Depression’s government work programs provided labor and capital for lining hundreds of miles of seasonal riverbeds with concrete to protect homes and businesses. As with many government infrastructure programs, it went too far.

Rivers from which generations of people took irrigation water and in which they played, swam, and, yes, fished — steelhead trout were native to the L.A. River — suddenly became places into which it was illegal to even enter. The corps and Los Angeles County Flood Control declared the river their territory, not the public’s.

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The public has been rightly taking its river back. When environmental activists began the quest to restore the L.A. River 20 years ago, the corps resisted efforts to have it declared a navigable waterway, a key designation for restoration. Kayakers had to sneak into it to prove its 48 miles could be paddled. Now, after much work, boating is allowed in small sections of it. And dozens of plans have been created to show what could be.

And it could be much more than the proposed restoration plan. Before a final decision is made next spring, and especially during a 45-day public comment period beginning Friday, Southern Californians should demand better access. They can e-mail to: comment.lariverstudy@usace.army.mil.